As a creator of narrative art, Mark Stock says nothing is more fun than staging a photo shoot for a painting he has yet to make.
So when Stock decided to revisit one of his more popular subjects — interpreting the artistic, historical and personal significance of the famed Hollywood sign — he asked a model to pose for a photo shoot at a spot in the El Cerrito Hills near Oakland that looks like the site of the sign.
"I said, 'Look, do you have a cocktail dress? Bring a couple.... I [then] got the lights. I got the extension cord. I got a shovel, and I got gloves. She shows up. She's cute. I say, 'I want this dress.' She goes in and puts the dress on. [By now,] the sun is setting. I say, 'Listen, I want you to sit down with your dress between your legs. One foot is going to be in the hole. The other foot is going to be outside the hole. Having already dug the hole, you're pulling this mystery box out.'"
ART: Can you guess the high price?
The result is a 64-by-55-inch oil-on-canvas that suggests a Hitchcock mystery. Titled "The Box," the painting depicts an attractive young woman in a red cocktail dress, big boots and garden gloves shining a flashlight on a filthy metal box she has just unearthed near the Hollywood sign. She has been guided to this spot by a map dated 1951 on Chateau Marmont letterhead she found while going through her great-aunt's belongings.
The painting compels the viewer to ask questions: Who is this young woman? Why is she digging for a box dressed for a party? What's in the box? Why was it buried near the Hollywood sign? Could its contents affect her future?
The Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Santa Monica is showing an exhibition of Stock's works titled "Hollywood: Uncovered." The exhibition, which runs through Dec. 31, is the artist's first to be held locally in a decade and features a metal box prominently displayed on a pedestal to enhance the mystery.
CHEAT SHEET: Fall arts preview
Inside the letters of the Hollywood sign, he has painted images of movie legends from Charlie Chaplin to Marilyn Monroe with a mixture of oil paint and wax, which gives the images a translucent quality. Also included in the letters are symbols of Hollywood's underbelly like the "Black Dahlia" Elizabeth Short and 24-year-old movie actress Peg Entwistle, who jumped to her death from the 50-foot-high letter H in 1932.
"He is so connected to film and film noir that he belongs down here and should be seen here," Schlesinger says. "He's a showman in everything he does."
Why his fascination with the Hollywood sign? "It's the monument itself. The famousness of it," Stock explains. "When I first arrived in L.A., the first thing I looked for was the Hollywood sign. I jumped out of my car — I remember it was on Franklin [Avenue] and a guy was coming out of a market and I screamed, 'Hey, is that the Hollywood sign?' I was obsessed."
PHOTOS: Art by Banksy
That was 1976 when, fresh out of art school at the University of South Florida in Tampa, he landed a job at the famed artists' workshop Gemini G.E.L. in L.A. as a printer for Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg and others.
Today, Stock's works can be seen in the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery and Library of Congress. A number of Hollywood actors, directors and producers have bought his work, and his paintings appear in the films "Sneakers," "Class Action," "Final Analysis," "What Women Want" and "The Human Contract" as well as TV's "Just Shoot Me!"
The 62-year-old artist is best known for his "Butler in Love" series of paintings, which depict a lovelorn servant (many are self-portraits). In some of them, the butler is holding an empty, lipstick-stained martini glass in his white-gloved hand, despondent in the knowledge that he can never have the woman he most desires — the lady who employs him.
PHOTOS: LA Opera through the years
Many of Stock's works deal with obsession, unrequited love, murder and suicide. They include scenes of dead golfers, spooky zeppelins, people standing on mountain ledges staring into the abyss, a woman sitting next to a body wrapped in a carpet, and jealous voyeurs in white dinner jackets peaking through window curtains, doorways or even from tree branches at … who? We aren't sure.
Stock doesn't mind varying interpretations of his works. "I love when people tell me their version of it," he says.
As Stock's biographer, Barnaby Conrad III, puts it: "The paintings veer from Pinteresque darkness to the television glow of soap opera." Conrad's "Mark Stock: Paintings" was published in 2000.
In 2003, Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight wrote, "Stylistically, Stock marries the shadowy look of 1940s Hollywood melodrama with its closest visual cousin in the European canon — the candlelighted inscrutability of 17th century followers of Caravaggio, such as Georges de La Tour."
Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang
Mark Stock's 'Hollywood: Uncovered' paintings hint at mysteries
Dengan url
http://sehatumbuah.blogspot.com/2013/11/mark-stocks-hollywood-uncovered.html
Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya
Mark Stock's 'Hollywood: Uncovered' paintings hint at mysteries
namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link
Mark Stock's 'Hollywood: Uncovered' paintings hint at mysteries
sebagai sumbernya
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar